When Sheldon S. Sollosy, president of Manpower Staffing Services, got into the temporary employment business – some 45 years ago – promoting the concept of temporary work translating into full-time employment was a definite no-no. Today, it is a common advertising approach.
When we started, it was a no-no,” said Sollosy. “There was a penalty to be paid. But now, if you look at some of the ads many of us run, you see a new term; ‘Temp-to-Perm.'”
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Sollosy said that today, temporary employment agencies commonly make arrangements with employers. For example, a company may agree to keep the employee on the temporary agency’s payroll for three months before taking them on as a full-time employee.
“There are all kinds of arrangements,” he said.
Certainly, the concept of using a temporary job to lead to a permanent one is growing.
One company – Interim Services, Inc. — suggests that as many as 40 percent of all temporary positions can lead to a permanent job offer. Interim Services, Inc. provides temporary workers to health care facilities and other industries, using a network of more than 700 offices throughout North America, including one in East Providence.
Often, according to Ray Marcy, president and chief executive officer of Interim Services, temporary jobs can serve as a “foot in the door” at a top company. They can provide an employee with valuable experience within a new industry, and they can serve as an opportunity to “test drive” a specific job or company, he said.
“All across America, people are turning to temporary positions as a passport to the jobs they want,” said Marcy. “As a matter of fact, every day an estimated 1.3 million people go to work as temporary employees.”
Sollosy said the 40 percent figure sounds a bit high, but it doesn’t totally surprise him.
“It’s hard to come up with an exact figure,” Sollosy said. “But with some of our large accounts, it’s probably about 25 percent.
Sollosy said the numbers are difficult to gauge. For example, he said, it is not uncommon for an employer to take on a temporary worker knowing that they expect the position to become full time. They may wait, however, for a full-time position to open through attrition.
Regardless of the motives, the temporary worker route appears to benefit both employee and employer.
“A lot of people are taking on temporary workers with the idea of hiring them permanently,” Sollosy said. “It’s good for both sides. It gives the employee a chance to see if he or she likes the job. And it gives the employer a chance to see if they have found a good employee.”
Timothy Harrington, president of the Cranston-based Qualified Resources, Inc. sees the same trends as Sollosy.
“Almost all of our clients take advantage of an arrangement where it is temporary to permanent,” Harrington said. “Both sides can feel each other out. Almost all companies are doing that now.”
Qualified Resources is an eight-year-old company. Harrington said that about 20 to 25 percent of the temporary workers Qualified Resources places stay on as permanent workers where they are placed.
”Five years ago, it wasn’t like this,” Harrington said. “This is the tightest labor market I have seen since I have been in the business. It is an employee’s market. They have a lot of choices in front of them.”
Manpower’s employment outlook
Companies struggling to recruit enough employees will find no relief from the extended worker shortage of the past two and one-half years, according to the results of
Manpower Inc.’s quarterly Employment Outlook Survey for the opening quarter of 2000.
In the poll of nearly 16,000 U.S. businesses, 24 percent expressed intentions to add staff at the outset of the new century, 10 percent will decrease employment, 61 percent plan no change and 5 percent remain uncertain.
Current survey results approximate those of seasonal record proportion established at the outset of the last two years.
According to Jeffrey Joerres, Man-power’s president and chief executive officer, employers should not expect a quick end to the shortage.
“The type of worker being sought in the New Year increasingly is more skilled or higher educated than in the past. The pool of such people is running dry” said Joerres. “as unemployment drops ever lower companies are forced to find less traditional methods of staffing or to develop methods of operating with fewer people.”
Joerres said production efficiencies both in manufacturing and in services or support activities have been allowing increased work output despite the dearth of additional people.
“It will take more time for education and training programs to catch up to the needs,” Joerres said.
